registry mayhem

the other night, after having half a bottle of red wine with my spaghetti dinner, i decided to begin writing thank-you cards. 50% of that motivation was due to the wine and the other 50% due to kz being out of town on business. what better to do than turn on lifetime and gush with some heartfelt gratitude (you know i'm kidding about lifetime, right? i was actually watching clear and present danger for the umpteenth time, because it is the best move ever, even with commercials).

i went clicking around on my desktop to find one of the 27 versions of the xls guest list that contained my column of "loot" where i'd typed in, one by one, what each guest bought us as i unwrapped or unpacked each item over the last 2 months (see "the mountain" below). yes, i was definitely that child who wouldn't eat her halloween candy before i dumped it all on the carpet, sorted by various groupings (wrapper color, sugar content, chocolate vs non, sticky vs chewy) until i was satisfied, and divvied it all up into compartments of a toolbox i reserved for such cataloging antics. i didn't have any friends, either.

anyway, i couldn't find a version of the file that had been updated since the day before the wedding. that only contained 5 or so gift notes of the 100+ i needed. i have a pretty good memory and could probably have reconstructed half of it, but that wasn't the point - i had been ORGANIZED and now my laptop was THWARTING ME and no wine-fueled searches for "*.xls" 'modified within the last month' yielded any fruit at all. i could have freaked but instead i poured another glass of wine and started writing out the thank-yous for old people first, since i think they still like to maintain decorum and see evidence that young people are still being raised with manners, and plus if i run out of steam (or stamps) and decide to bail and start sending thank-you emails, a lot of old peeps would prefer a hand-mailed letter (by pony express, if possible) to them new-fangled internets. even though nobody can read my tiny lefty scrawl, bifocals or glaucoma notwithstanding.

then of course, kz managed to find my file for me, hidden away on our shared items folder on the server with the same name as 10 other iterations all updated too long ago (a mistake never to be repeated; i shall go back to naming my files with version numbers, OCD appearances be damned). the moral of the story: i had called crate and barrel in a near-panic on monday, conjuring up my best "i just got married and i'm totally a real woman with serious woman-like emotions who is upset and may just cry or scream on the phone because i am having a problem and YOU must fix it, phone minion" - i think it was a convincing act, to be sure - and it turns out they can mail you a list of the names of people who purchased off your registry if they used a credit card, and what they purchased. it takes 2 weeks by mail, but it is a good thing to know in the case of a retard move like mine.

and as a side note, packing lists are actually pretty helpful - they contain the sender's address, even if they bought it and had it shipped online. i learned this, sadly, after the destruction and removal of the first mountain and its associated detritus; i only saved the second round of packing slips. this mattered to me because i didn't have anyone's addresses to begin with, being in the rather unique position of having sent solely electronic invitations but wanting to old-skool it with my thank-you cards. i'm still not sure why i decided to do that, i think it's because i found stamps and ink pads at the craft store, and blank off-white cards and envelopes, and i must have been going through the martha stewart phase of day 2 of PMS, because here i sit: 10 cards done after 3 hours of work. and not a stamp in the house.